Chocolate, confectionery and baked goods Sacmi Packaging & Chocolate specialises in these kinds of products with positive connotations. The company site responsible for the DACH region is in Neuhausen am Rheinfall. In addition to service and sales, important development work is carried out there. A team of engineers is dedicated to working on packaging solutions. The new JT Advance high-performance flow-wrapping machine, which has already proven itself in many applications, is an expression of this.

Perhaps it is Europe's largest waterfall in the immediate neighbourhood that inspires technicians to peak performance. In Neuhausen am Rheinfall, in an area where Europe's first aluminium smelter once made industrial history, there is now a modern industrial quarter. Sacmi Packaging & Chocolate Swiss SA is located right in the centre of Rhyfall Village. In friendly open-plan offices and a factory hall flooded with daylight, employees develop new machines for packaging confectionery and baked goods.

The site was occupied in 2021 as part of a market offensive that necessitated restructuring. It is important to note that Sacmi Packaging & Chocolate is a comparatively young business unit of the long-established mechanical engineering group Sacmi, based in Imola in northern Italy. Under the well-known brands Carle & Montanari (chocolate production) and OPM (packaging), the company offers unique machines and complete lines for the entire process from cocoa paste to final packaging. Since its foundation in 2018, the company has invested heavily in the market. Herbert Hahnenkamp, General Manager for the DACH region, explains the background: "Sacmi Packaging & Chocolate aims to be one of the top European packaging machine manufacturers. Initially, we only supplied major customers outside Italy. In order to position ourselves more broadly, we also wanted to address smaller, medium-sized manufacturers. However, this only works via regional sales and service organisations.

This led to the establishment of subsidiaries in the USA, Poland and Neuhausen am Rheinfall in Switzerland. “Sacmi Packaging & Chocolate's growth strategy also aims to systematically close any remaining gaps in the portfolio. This will be achieved through company acquisitions and in-house innovations. Sacmi has always attached great importance to research and development. The primary goal of the parent company, which is organised as a cooperative, is to create jobs and not to maximise profits – in other words, profits are largely reinvested. For this reason, an in-house development centre for primary and secondary packaging machines has been established in Neuhausen am Rheinfall. “The availability of highly qualified specialists in the Lake Constance region was decisive for the choice of location; we were able to recruit nine outstanding engineers in one go,“ reports Herbert Hahnenkamp. Today, the team already has 13 employees and is constantly expanding. Development work focusses on basic technologies, Industry 4.0 applications and advanced materials. Here, the site benefits from cooperation with other divisions of the Sacmi Group, for example in terms of plastics expertise or top-class laboratory technology. Herbert Hahnenkamp cites a practical example: “ A customer complained about problems with a paper film and we were able to provide proof with a special microscopic examination that the product properties did not meet the manufacturer's specifications.“

The development team's first mission was to design a horizontal high-performance flow-wrapping machine. In close collaboration with a Swiss chocolate manufacturer, Halba, the fully electronic and servo-controlled JT Advance was launched. The system achieves film speeds of up to 150 metres per minute and is an ideal packaging solution for many products thanks to its extensive configurability. Users can use it to produce flat pouches, gusseted pouches, pouches with an offset seal, pouches with a tear strip and on-edge packaging. Hot or cold sealable materials such as polypropylene, barrier films, laminates, polyethylene or for the sake of the environment paper-based films can be processed. Once the prototype of the JT Advance had proven itself in Halba's production, nothing stood in the way of its market launch in 2021. Since then, the flow-wrapping machine has been a success story and today, almost four years later, around 60 machines are already in use worldwide.

The development services are just one example of how successfully Sacmi has established itself in Neuhausen am Rheinfall. The site now provides service for around 700 installed machines throughout the DACH region. The attached demo, test and training centre is also well received by the industry. "On the sales side, our high level of consulting expertise plays into our hands, as all of our colleagues are project engineers,“ says Herbert Hahnenkamp. "Our customers today include all leading Swiss chocolate manufacturers, for example. And the proportion of small and medium-sized companies is 50 per cent." A further site was recently opened in Schwäbisch Hall, which is affiliated with the Swiss company. Sacmi employs six people there, who are responsible for sales, project planning, customer service and training. When asked what the future holds, Hahnenkamp replies: "We want to further expand our innovative strength in prototype construction and become even better known on the market. Our next target group is industrial baked goods manufacturers, for whose needs we have optimised packaging solutions."